Our friends at the Museum of the Moving Image are giving Flavorpill New York readers the chance to win a pair of tickets to an exclusive screening of director Jane Campion’s latest film, Bright Star, Monday night at the Directors Guild Theater. The period romance — a return to the kind of material that made Campion a ’90s arthouse darling — tells the tragic, true life story of John Keats’ final years (ie., his late twenties), and his doomed romance with the girl next door, Fanny Brawne.
The screening will be followed by a Pinewood Dialogue with Campion moderated by Chief Curator David Schwartz. We’ve rounded up some of the early reviews below (the film premiered to positive buzz earlier this year at Cannes) so you can know what to expect. But know this going in — this is no Lady Chatterley’s Lover. You never get to see Keats and Brawne do more than kiss.
“Campion films the melodrama with admirable restraint. Visually, her film is as spare and sensual as the poetry that she manages to stitch into the film with a thrilling lack of fuss. After a recent run of indifferent form, the director is back to her best.” [via Times UK]
“This heartfelt film has a nobility of its own; it draws you irresistibly into its world, and it might even trigger a new interest in Keats to match the sales of Jane Austen.” [via The Guardian]
“With much grace and at considerable leisure, 1993 Palme d’Or winner Campion (“The Piano”) tells the story of the brief love affair between the gifted but early dead poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne. Ben Whishaw plays Keats with impeccable tragedy and Abbie Cornish portrays winningly the beautiful seamstress Fanny, whose passion is constrained only by the rigorous mores of the times.” [via THR]
“All of Campion’s films center upon strong, complicated women, and [Abbie] Cornish’s Fanny takes her place among the most memorable of them.” [via Variety]
View the trailer for the film below.